She found Nance giving vent to noiseless laughter in the Morris chair. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and her face was purple with suppressed amusement. Molly often said that, when Nance did laugh, she was like the pig who died in clover. When he died, he died all over. When Nance succumbed to laughter, her entire being was given over to merriment. "Wasn't it beautiful?" she exclaimed in a low voice. "Did you ever imagine such ludicrous English? It was all participles. How do you suppose she ever made the entrance examinations?" "Oh, she's probably good enough at writing. It's just speaking that stumps her. But wasn't she killingly funny? When she said 'my estates have unto this place arriving come,' I thought I should have to departing go along with you. But it would have been rude beyond words. What a dear little thing she is! I think I'll go over later and see how she is. America must be polite to her visitors." But Japan, always beforehand in ceremonious politeness, was again ahead of America in this respect. Just before ten o'clock the mouse's tail once more brushed their door and Nance's sharp ears catching the faint sound, she called, "Come in." Miss Otoyo Sen entered, this time less timidly, but with the same deprecating smile on her diminutive face. "Begging honorable pardon of beautiful young ladies," she began, "will condescendingly to accept unworthy gift from Otoyo in gratitude of favors receiving?" Then she produced a beautiful Japanese scroll at least four feet in length. In the background loomed up the snow-capped peak of the ever-present sacred mountain, Fujiyama, and the foreground disclosed a pleasing combination of sky-blue waters dotted with picturesque little islands connected with graceful curving bridges, and here and there were cherry trees aglow with delicate pink blossoms. "Oh, how perfectly sweet," exclaimed the girls, delighted. "And just the place on this bare wall space!" continued Molly. "It's really a heaven-sent gift, Miss Sen, because we were wishing for something really beautiful to hang over that divan. But aren't you robbing yourself?" "No, no. I beg you assurance. Otoyo have many suchly. It is nothing. Beautiful young ladies do honor by accepting humbly gift." "Let's hang it at once," suggested Molly, "while the step ladder is yet with us. Queen's step ladder is so much in demand that it's very much like the snowfall in the river, 'a moment there, then gone forever.'" The two girls moved the homely but coveted ladder across the room, and, with much careful shifting and after several suggestions timidly made by Otoyo, finally hung up the scroll. It really glorified the whole room and made a framed lithograph of a tea-drinking lady in a boudoir costume and a kitten that trifled with a ball of yarn on the floor, Nance's possession, appear so commonplace that she shamefacedly removed it from its tack and put it back in her trunk, to Molly's secret relief.